Description of problem: Desktop display windows have no decorations and don't create buttons in bottom panel. Workplace Switcher also does not display properly. This appears to be a privilege problem as the desktop behaves normally for "root." The attached screenshot shows problems. It was difficult to run more than 1 application as most of them display in the upper-left corner of the screen, overlaying the desktop menus. I'm not sure this is a Nautilus problem but the only error messages that show up upon exiting X that are unique to the unprivileged user are: ** (nautilus:pid):WARNING **: Can not calculate _NET_NUMBER_OF_DESKTOPS ** (nautilus:pid):WARNING **: Can not get _NET_WORKAREA ** (nautilus:pid):WARNING **: Can not determine workarea, gussing at layout The only difference in the Xorg log is that these lines are at the end of the non-priv user's log: (II) SAVAGE(0): [drm] removed 1 reserved context for kernel (II) SAVAGE(0): [drm] unmapping 8192 bytes of SAREA 0xeebf1000 at 0xb0eb5000 Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): Every package is the latest available. How reproducible: Every login/startx for non-root account Additional info: This started after applying the following set of updates: Packages Installed: pygobject2-doc.i386 2.12.2-2.fc6 Packages Updated: foomatic.i386 3.0.2-39.1.fc6 oprofile.i386 0.9.2-3.fc6 gnome-python2-canvas.i386 2.16.2-1.fc6 hal-cups-utils.i386 0.6.2-4.2 pygobject2-devel.i386 2.12.2-2.fc6 pygobject2.i386 2.12.2-2.fc6 nautilus.i386 2.16.2-5.fc6 xorg-x11-xinit.i386 1.0.2-15.fc6 nautilus-extensions.i386 2.16.2-5.fc6 sysstat.i386 7.0.0-2.fc6 gnome-python2-gnomevfs.i386 2.16.2-1.fc6 gnome-python2.i386 2.16.2-1.fc6 oprofile-gui.i386 0.9.2-3.fc6 libsoup.i386 2.2.97-1.fc6 gnome-python2-gconf.i386 2.16.2-1.fc6 gnome-python2-bonobo.i386 2.16.2-1.fc6
Created attachment 141590 [details] Screenshot of errant display
It seems you are not running a window manager.
(In reply to comment #2) > It seems you are not running a window manager. > How would I have done that? I'm not aware of any action on my part that would have created this situation. Remember, this does not happen to the root user. How do I find out for sure? Then, what do I do about it? I also meant to mention that I'm only seeing this on the Athlon box and not on an x86_64 or VMware VM install that I've done.
OK, figured it out. You are correct that no window manager was running. What happened was I tried to Enable Desktop Effects (switch to compiz) and the whole UI locked up... no screen, no keyboard, no mouse. I had to ssh in from another system and reboot to restore sanity. This coincided with the package updates cited above and I incorrectly associated the actions. I restored normal display behavior with: metacity --replace gconf & I then tried: compiz --replace gconf & and that trashed everything again so I rebooted and restored metacity as above. I'm not changing the status/flags on this report as I'm assuming you'll want to pursue the problems with compiz. I'll be happy to help if I can.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 212725 ***